Lou’s View – Nov. 12, 2015
RAIN OF FIRE
by Lou Bernard
Around this time of year, if you look up at the sky, you’re likely to see a falling star. At night, I mean. During the day, you can stand there for hours looking at the sky like a fool, and you won’t see much in the way of shooting stars. But at night, they’re plentiful.
This is mainly because the Leonid Meteor Shower occurs every year around this time. If you sit and watch for a little while, you’ll see some of the meteors.
Now, I’m a historian, not an astronomer. So right now, you’re wondering what I’m doing writing about meteor showers and encouraging you to go stare at the stars.
It’s Lock Haven’s history.
The first time this happened in Lock Haven was nine days after that city was founded. And the early citizens knew it as the “Rain of Fire.”
It happened on November 13th, 1833. A Wednesday. About five in the morning.
Lock Haven had just been founded the week before. People were living here, mostly on the east end, in hotels or whatever homes they had managed to build up within the past week. And it was a very early morning, still dark, and they heard the noise outside. And it was a meteor shower.
Everyone ran from their homes in a panic, and then found out that it was harmless, and settled down to watch the cool show.
Probably the best description comes from “History of Centre and Clinton Counties” by John Blair Linn. Page 77.
“”The most brilliant coruscations spread over every corner of the heavens,” wrote Linn, who saw no reason to avoid being poetic in a history book. “From the zenith to the horizon, all was bespangled with shooting stars or meteors. The phenomenon was attended at first with a crepitating or hurtling sound, which ceased at the approach of dawn, and the spectacle exhibited its splendors in silence. People imagined their houses on fire, and rushed out only to find the heavens sprinkled with glories—Thousands of shooting stars going in a northwest direction, leaving brilliant tracks behind.”
Just to give this some context, the preceding paragraph in the book was about a man named John Yarger who had recently grown a record-setting radish that was thirteen inches long and weighed over ten pounds. So it was a slow news week, is what I’m saying here.
And speaking of a northwest direction, what was happening in the northwest at that time? Let me take you to Seth Nelson, who claimed to have experienced the Rain of Fire up around Altar Rock, in the northern part of the county.
Nelson was a panther hunter who lived up there. He had a reputation for being something of a super-hero. Seth Nelson claimed, at various times in his life, to have been immortal, to have regained his eyesight after going blind, and to have entered into hand-to-hand combat with bears and panthers and come out the victor. So say what you will about Seth Nelson, but he was also an eyewitness to the Rain of Fire.
“Such a magnificent sight I never saw,” he wrote in his journal later. “The stars were falling all around me. These meteors were falling as fast as any heavy snowstorm. They appeared to be as large as my fist and upon touching the earth they disappeared.”
Clearly, Seth Nelson was not above some exaggeration in much the same way that the Susquehanna River is not above the Bald Eagle Mountains. He claimed to have been hit in the head with meteors, but of course it didn’t hurt. He didn’t even feel it, because he was Seth HYPERLINK “mailto:#@*%ing” #%*&ing Nelson, and nothing could ever hurt him. Now, I’m not exactly Carl Sagan, but I’ve got to assume that a meteor to the head is going to sting a little. So I’m a bit dubious on Nelson’s account, but it is certain that he at least saw the meteor shower.
1833 was the brightest Leonid shower on record; it peaks every thirty years or so. But it does happen every year, so keep your eye on the nighttime skies, and see if you can spot some meteors. Take a deep breath, and appreciate the beauty and wonder of the universe. Unless you happen to be an immortal panther hunter. In which case, duck.
